


don’t leave the room until i come back from the dead for you (i will come back from the dead for you)

by voxofthevoid



Series: here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Rimming, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:54:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27606569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: Steve is struck by the posture.Bucky sprawled on the couch, each and every time, curling into its soft embrace like a lazy cat, snuggling up to Steve whenever he could, rarely letting his feet even touch the ground. James’s spine is ramrod straight, a good few inches away from the back of the couch, and there’s tension thrumming in every line of his body, the sight so familiar that Steve would never have taken notice of it if not for Bucky.It almost sends him to his knees, this concrete reality.James looks up.The eyes are the same, but the face they’re set in is older, harder, deep slashes carved into its handsome lines. Bucky looked like a boy who’d grow into a man with laugh lines, but when James’s brow furrows, it’s with a frown that threatens at every moment to morph into a scowl. He doesn’t look older than thirty, he never will, but he wears every one of his hundred years in his too-old eyes.“James,” Steve chokes out.It’s a greeting, but it’s also grief.“Steve,” James returns evenly. “Good morning.”-Steve is condemned to be haunted by men who are still alive.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960033
Comments: 192
Kudos: 611





	1. don’t leave the room until i come back from the dead for you

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from Richard Siken’s “You Are Jeff” and series title from “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out.” 
> 
> This one's rough on the heart, as you can likely tell from the summary. But it'll get better! The whole fic is 16k, of which 11k is this chapter. Next one should be up in December, god and corona willing. 
> 
> You can find me on my tumblr.

Steve wakes up alone.

There’s a moment when it’s alright—when he stretches out an arm over the warmth lingering on the sheets, when he strains his ears for sounds from the kitchen or the bathroom, when he thinks, half-conscious, that Bucky’s awake and somewhere in the house, full of that energy that makes Steve feel both young and old at the same time.

The tragedy is that Steve has good instincts. It’s not the serum; this was honed in back alleys and hospital beds, its edges carved sharp while he breathed through a tight throat and spat blood and held his dying mother’s hand.

He shoots upright, heart pounding.

“Bucky?” he calls softly, so softly that Bucky wouldn’t have heard even if he were in the room with Steve.

Silence is all that answers, but Steve knows, deep in his bones, that he’s not alone in this house.

He dresses numbly, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, frustrated at the seconds he loses to it yet unwilling to step out nude for reasons he doesn’t dare examine too closely. He pads out of the room, cold sweat digging sharp claws into his flesh.

James is sitting on the couch, hands folded neatly across his lap, almost as if he’s waiting.

Steve is struck by the posture.

Bucky sprawled on the couch, each and every time, curling into its soft embrace like a lazy cat, snuggling up to Steve whenever he could, rarely letting his feet even touch the ground. James’s spine is ramrod straight, a good few inches away from the back of the couch, and there’s tension thrumming in every line of his body, the sight so familiar that Steve would never have taken notice of it if not for Bucky.

It almost sends him to his knees, this concrete reality.

James looks up.

The eyes are the same, but the face they’re set in is older, harder, deep slashes carved into its handsome lines. Bucky looked like a boy who’d grow into a man with laugh lines, but when James’s brow furrows, it’s with a frown that threatens at every moment to morph into a scowl. He doesn’t look older than thirty, he never will, but he wears every one of his hundred years in his too-old eyes.

“James,” Steve chokes out.

It’s a greeting, but it’s also grief.

“Steve,” James returns evenly. “Good morning.”

It’s such an innocuous phrase, pregnant with meaning precisely because it means nothing. Steve stares, can’t not, frozen in place by the man in front of him and numb inside from the memories of the boy he was last night.

_I’m not really real, am I?_

But he was.

James smiles. It’s one of his not-smiles, where his mouth curls up and his eyes crinkle, where he’s doing all the right things, making all the right gestures, but the resulting expression is more painful than any scream.

“How many days did I lose?”

-

Four days is not much in the grand scheme of things. James is used to losing years and decades in varying increments. Steve slept for seventy years. But the years that slipped away have only made them more wary of losing time, be it days or years, and Steve knows that the fear is more acute in James, whose mind still turns on him, blending dates and tongues and nations.

It's not surprising that James takes Steve’s answer with a nod and promptly vanishes out the front door.

He doesn’t ask why he woke up naked in Steve’s bed.

Did he wake up naked in Steve’s bed? Steve would have woken. He’d have felt Bucky shift, heard his footsteps grow heavier.

When Steve ventures into James’s bedroom, feeling guilty but also needing to _see_ , he finds the closet doors wide open—one side stocked with dark, drab shades, the other a riot of color. A pair of James’s pants are lying on the floor, but Bucky’s clothes are undisturbed.

-

He texts Natasha the news, knowing she’ll see it when she can afford to. He calls Sam, and some of what he’s feeling must show in his voice because Sam probes, his support not gentle so much as staunchly solid.

“I missed James when he was gone,” Steve says. His voice is low and doesn’t break. “Now I miss Bucky. Doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“Doesn’t it?” Sam asks predictably. “They were practically two people. And you seem like you liked the kid.”

Sam doesn’t know the half of it. Steve thinks of the soft give of Bucky’s skin and the way he smiled there at the end, pained and so fucking young, brave even in his terror.

Steve never stood a goddamn chance.

“Yeah,” is all he says. “That I did.”

“But you’re glad to have James back,” Sam says, and it’s not a question.

“I am,” Steve replies, and it’s not a lie.

Tony’s nosier, but it’s not Steve’s emotions he cares about. Alright, that’s harsh. It’s less that he doesn’t care about Steve’s emotions and more that he can’t read Steve the way Sam or Nat can. That’s for the best because emotional intelligence would combine badly with Tony’s peculiar way of showing his love, and then Steve would probably have to kill him.

He deflects Tony’s questions and when Strange suddenly joins in, Steve shuts him down too. His ignorance is partly genuine; he doesn’t know why the effects reversed this morning, just as he doesn’t know where James is now. As for the things he does know—did anything notable happen last night, does James seem stable—well, those aren’t things he’ll ever share.

He hangs up once the conversation becomes circular, with a hasty assurance to tell James to drop by the tower. And he will, but whether or not James will listen is out of his hands. It’s fifty-fifty on a good day, but Steve doubts this will be a good day.

Once he’s out of things to do, people to inform, Steve drops like a sack of stones.

He rests his head against the wall, and he doesn’t cry, but his eyes burn like they want to. Later, when he steps into a scalding shower to wash last night and that boy’s scent off his skin, the water sluices down his face like it’s doing the job his tears can’t.

-

James comes back. He always comes back.

Steve doesn’t see him, but he hears him. By the time he forces his stiff body to leave its awkward crouch on the bed and makes it outside, the only evidence of James’s return is his firmly shut bedroom door. Steve lingers in front of it for a few moments, well aware that James probably knows he’s out here. He even reaches out once, fingertips almost brushing the knob.

He doesn’t do anything in the end. James needs time, and Steve has learned, over the last two years, to push a little, but there are times for that and this isn’t one.

He contemplates food because he hasn’t eaten anything since he woke, and while he can’t say he feels hungry, a body like his needs fuel to run. He drags his feet as he heads to the kitchen. He takes one look into the fridge and damn near slams it shut. It’s full of things he bought when Bucky came, ingredients filling the usually half-empty racks.

Steve eats cereal dry and scurries back to his room.

There are texts and missed calls waiting for him. None of the former seem urgent. Five of the six missed calls are from Tony, the times matching the first two minutes after Steve hung up on him. The last one is Natasha.

He calls back and tries to breathe calmly as it rings and rings. There’s something hot and unpleasant itching under his skin. He needs a punching bag, wants to feel his skin split on something real.

Natasha picks up just when Steve starts to hope that the call will go unanswered.

“You got attached,” is what she starts with, voice pitched a little higher than her usual, the only available indication that wherever she is now, she’s not Natasha Romanoff.

“Hello to you too, Nat.”

“Ah, you’re moping.”

“I sent you a three-word text. You can’t have learned all that from it.”

“Can’t I?” she asks mildly. “I warned you.”

“Don’t you always.”

It comes out flat, almost angry. Steve grits his teeth and makes an effort to rein it in. He’s angry, he’s always been angry, but that five-foot nothing spitfire could afford to let it show in ways Steve no longer can. But for all that the serum fixed the stutter of his heart and the twist of his spine, it didn’t heal his soul; it helps, having people he loves, people who love him back and will follow him from war to war, but Steve thinks that a part of him will always be angry.

He chokes it down with the familiarity, if not the ease, of long practice, forcing the venom away from his voice and back into his blood.

On the phone, Natasha is silent. He can hear her breathe and knows she’s letting him know she’s just thinking.

“How is he?” she asks finally. “Does he remember any of it?”

Steve’s simultaneously terrified and desperate at the thought of that. He swallows once, twice, before answering.

“I don’t know.”

“I see.” She doesn’t seem surprised that Steve and James haven’t talked; she wouldn’t be, not when she’s known them both for the entire length of their cohabitation. “And how are you?”

“I slept with him,” Steve tells her. “The kid, I mean.”

There’s a peculiar lack of emotion in his words, and Steve knows, even as he hears himself, that it’s more telling than any amount of rage or grief. Over the phone, Natasha makes a soft sound of surprise. She’s not one easily shocked, but of course, she wouldn’t have expected this from Steve. No one did, not even himself.

He considers confessions of guilt and self-reproach. _Shouldn’t have_ s crowd up his thoat, each one ringing hollow. He shouldn’t have fucked Bucky, but he doesn’t regret it. And maybe he shouldn’t have cared so deeply for a kid he knew for four days, but the thought of feeling less for Bucky is more repugnant than any amount of pain.

Captain America always does the right thing, but Steve Rogers has always been damnably human.

He holds his tongue.

“God, Steve,” Natasha sounds pained, almost, and it’s not just the exasperation she’s fond of throwing at him. This is genuine, which makes it infinitely worse. “Why? You must have known he’d leave.”

“Of course I did.”

“Then—” She cuts herself off because she won’t ask why again. “Is it because you can’t have James and—”

“Stop,” Steve says, quiet and hard. “Don’t. You know better. You know me better.”

“I know only you can manage to pull this shit in less than a _week_ , Steve, fuck. Can’t you make a single thing easier for yourself?”

“Shouldn’t be me you’re concerned about.”

“That so? What should be my concerns, Cap, tell me.”

“He was a kid, Nat.”

“I am not going to debate the morality of fucking a sixteen-year-old any more than I’m going to prod at you fucking the teenaged version of the man you’re in love with,” she says, in a tone so perfectly bland that it’s a paradox in itself, and Steve realizes, abruptly, that he’s hearing Natasha now, not whatever persona she’s wearing.

“Thank you,” Steve says stiffly. “I appreciate that.”

She growls.

Then she takes a deep breath. Steve can imagine, with perfect clarity, her expression as she lets it go with her next breath.

“At least,” she says, voice lighter now, back to the non-Natashaness of before, “you didn’t deny being in love with him.”

“Can’t anymore, can I?”

“Sure you can, Steve. But I’m glad you didn’t.”

What she’s not saying and what Steve can hear perfectly well is that she’s glad he told her instead of bottling it in. She and Sam both like to get on his case about that, in their disparate and infinitely different ways. Steve appreciates the concern even though he doesn’t always appreciate their methods.

This time, he just hums.

What he doesn’t say, not for the rest of the short conversation and never at all, is that having sex with Bucky, even loving him, wasn’t their tragedy.

 _Last night, he was afraid he wasn’t real_ , Steve would have said if he knew how. _And now he’s not, and I’m the only one who knows._

-

Steve doesn’t sleep that night. His sheets smell like Bucky, and he spends a solid hour torn between burying his face in a pillow and stripping the covers to lay fresh ones. The pillow wins out in the end. The scent will fade eventually. Steve doesn’t have the heart to make it happen faster.

-

James is waiting for him in the morning.

He doesn’t make a secret of it; James has many odd habits and sitting quietly in the dark before dawn has broken is sadly one of them, but he usually doesn’t do it on the floor in front of Steve’s bedroom door.

He damn near gives Steve a heart attack.

“Jesus fuck, James,” he pants, clutching his chest. “What the hell—you could have just knocked.”

“Didn’t want to disturb you,” James says, already getting up. “Weren’t you asleep?”

His voice is dry like he already knows the answer. For the sake of his sanity, Steve says nothing, just steps back silently to let James into his room, though god knows why he’s here.

James doesn’t make it more than a few feet past the doorway. He stops, hands jammed into his pocket as he looks anywhere but at Steve, who stares helplessly instead, hardly daring to breathe.

“Where are they?” James asks finally, voice barely above a murmur.

Steve blinks at James, who’s now eyeing him expectantly, and Steve’s got many skills but mind reading isn’t one of them.

“Where’s what?”

“My weapons.”

The expectation has turned to exasperation by the time Steve connects that to the mini armory he confiscated from James’s room, back when he thought Bucky would actually spend time in there.

It already feels like it happened in another lifetime, but that blue-eyed boy was as real as anything.

“Oh,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he sounds like, but whatever it is that James hears in his voice makes him narrow his eyes at Steve, pinning him with the weight of his sharp-eyed concern.

Steve’s helpless under those eyes, and if James asks him something, _anything_ , he’ll fold like a house of cards.

But James doesn’t.

Steve manages, somehow, to tear his eyes away and do what he’s supposed to. The cardboard box is right where he left it. Steve stops for a second, remembering painfully clearly how he thought he’d need to scream at something when it’s all over. He can feel it bubbling up his throat even now, fingers trembling on the cardboard; he chokes it back, and it feels like fire down his throat.

He turns around, box of weapons in hand, the sight of which makes a pained expression cross James’s face.

Steve raises an eyebrow, challenging him to say anything, but James just shakes his head like he’s lost hope for humanity, Steve in particular, and takes the box from him. The expression he bestows on it is the strangest thing, a cross between relief and frustration. It’s only for a second. When he looks up to thank Steve, every trace of that peculiar emotion has vanished from his face.

“It’s nothing,” Steve says absently, staring helplessly at James, and it’s just like before, history repeating its vicious cycle—he can see Bucky in James’s eyes and the shape of his mouth and the color of his hair, but the man standing in front of him is another person entirely.

“I’ll, uh, go,” James says, uncharacteristically awkward, and Steve snaps out of it.

He thrusts his arm out to catch James without even thinking, and the moment he makes contact, he flushes hot with the awareness that he’s maybe the only person in the world who can touch James like this and not lose a limb.

James frowns at Steve’s hand on his bicep and turns a questioning look at him, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. His hair sways with the motion, one of the shorter strands falling over his forehead in an elegant curl.

He’s beautiful. Steve hasn’t had the luxury of ignoring that for a long time, but now, the sight of him sinks poisoned claws into Steve’s heart.

“Are you happy?”

It’s a random question, foolish even, and judging by James’s floored expression, he’d be less shocked if Steve simultaneously transformed into a ten-foot monkey.

Steve lets him go as if burned.

“I—” He opens his mouth with vague intentions of taking back his question, but he finds that he can’t. He settles on a soft, “Sorry.”

James’s stare is focused and intent, the considerable weight of his attention on Steve. He wants to hide from it, which isn’t like him at all, but after the last four days, after _Bucky_ , Steve’s as terrified of his own mind as he is of what James will see in his eyes.

“I’m living,” James says in the end, with a distracting half-smile that leaves Steve reeling. “Someone told me that’s the best we can do.”

Steve did, an eternity ago.

James leaves, and Steve lets him go.

-

The days crawl by, and they don’t talk about it.

James goes to the tower, turning down Steve’s offer to accompany him, and when he returns, he’s quiet and subdued, haunting the couch and the kitchen, a ghost wholly unlike the one he used to be.

Steve missed James when Bucky was suddenly in his place, but he always knew James would come back. Sure, there was a bead of concern in the back of his mind but whatever their faults, Tony and Strange made an effective duo and were rarely wrong in their conjectures.

Missing Bucky is different. Steve knows he’s gone forever.

He wonders what happened that night. Did Bucky just close his eyes, never to wake? Or did he feel it, painfully aware as his mind and body changed to their natural state? Steve hopes it was the former. Bucky would have been terrified otherwise.

He would have woken Steve, right? If he knew it was happening, if he was afraid—he’d have woken Steve. But he didn’t, so he must have died quietly.

He didn’t die quietly the first time. Steve read the files on the Winter Soldier, on Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. It took a lot of time, a lot of effort, to break him—ten words and seventeen years.

-

Another punching bag breaks under his fist, sand flying everywhere, and Steve spares a moment to be grateful that he went the extra mile and converted their basement into a gym. He always felt bad destroying public property, even with compensation. S.H.I.E.L.D facilities, back before he knew they had a Nazi infestation, posed the same problem the tower’s gyms do—Steve never felt comfortable truly letting go there, hyperaware of the invisible eyes watching and cataloguing his every move. Lovely as JARVIS is, there are secrets Steve wants to keep.

He hefts a new bag over his shoulder and sets it up, but before he can continue to pummel his feelings into oblivion, someone clears their throat.

Steve freezes.

“James,” he says without turning around, “you should be asleep.”

The ensuing silence manages to be deeply judgmental. Steve reluctantly turns around, acutely aware of his sweaty shirt sticking to his skin and the blood seeping through his bandaged knuckles.

James’s expression is carefully blank, but there’s no hiding the quick once-over he gives Steve.

“How can I,” he says after a pause, “when you’re making a ruckus down here?”

“Oh, come on, you’ve slept through worse.”

James raises an eyebrow. Steve, uncharacteristically, wants to hide.

“It’s the eighth day in a row. You’re making me anxious.”

There’s a question there, one James is not asking. He likely won’t. In the years they’ve spent together, Steve can count on one hand the number of times James has consciously initiated a confrontation.

“Sorry,” Steve says, mustering a weak smile. “Didn’t mean to bother you.”

James frowns. His eyes are narrowed and yeah, Steve wouldn’t believe himself either if he were in James’s place. But he can’t really tell him the truth, can he?

This morning, he woke up to realize that his sheets barely smelled like Bucky anymore. He’s been gone for twice the amount of time he was here, and reality has been quick to close in around his absence. It feels surreal, those four days. Steve clings to the memories fiercely because he promised and god, he doesn’t want to forget. He can’t, he physically cannot forget, but he’s terrified all the same.

“It’s not a bother,” James says eventually. “But stop abusing the equipment. We’ll go a round.”

Shock keeps Steve rooted to the spot, tongue leaden in his mouth, as James walks over to the mats stacked up in one corner and lays one out. He stretches on it, the impressive lines of his body twisting this way and that.

They’ve sparred before, but Steve was always the one to ask. James was reluctant to agree at first, more terrified of what he was capable of than anyone else, and even after he became comfortable going at it with Steve, he never asked.

This feels like as dream-like as Bucky’s arrival.

“James.”

James looks over at him, right arm stretched across his chest. His mouth quirks up and even his eyes soften, and Steve has to wonder what kind of expression he’s wearing to make James take pity on him.

“Come on,” James says, softer than Steve’s ever heard him. “I’m a better match for you than that punching bag.”

Steve walks over to him as if hypnotized.

This is a bad idea, he knows. The thought of touching James, even in the controlled violence of a spar, is as terrifying as it’s tantalizing. Steve’s skin warms as he takes his place opposite James, flushing hotter from anticipation than it did during the earlier exertion.

James lunges.

It’s instinct to fall into the familiar motions, Steve’s body reacting on autopilot even as his mind scatters in a thousand directions, images of James and Bucky and the Soldier shuddering along its edges. But autopilot isn’t enough against James. Within two minutes, Steve’s on his back on the mat, James pinning his arms to the side and straddling his chest, barely out of breath.

Steve stares at the pink part of his lips and imagines them wet and swollen, smiling around the cock in his mouth.

He breaks out of James’s grip and flips them over and doesn’t press his advantage, retreating instead to a safe distance. James leaps to his feet, scowling, staring Steve down like he knows something’s not right. Of course he does; only Natasha can tell better than James when Steve’s head is not in the game. Steve has always been appreciative of the way they fell into step with each other, but right now, James’s probing gaze is the last thing he wants.

“This is a bad idea, James,” he says, echoing his earlier thoughts.

“Why?”

James’s tone is deceptively mild. Steve backs up a step.

“I’m…compromised.”

“This isn’t a mission.”

“I know that.”

James cocks his head, expectant, but Steve doesn’t have anything for him—no excuses, no explanations. What the fuck can he say anyway— _I miss the boy you don’t remember being_? He could, James would likely just accept it, but fuck, Steve’s not that great an asshole.

James is there suddenly, closing the distance between them in the span of a blink. Steve almost takes a step back but doesn’t, staring helplessly at James. He breathes, and James fills his nose, the musk of a body after a night’s sleep mingled with the sweeter scent of hair products. Steve sways closer, and James lets him, hardly startling at the proximity. He doesn’t like people in his space, which Steve knows all too well, but James came to _him_ , and Steve isn’t as strong as people seem to think he is.

Pretty blue eyes blink at him; they’re eyes you could drown in, and Steve’s used to shoving those thoughts down and tearing his gaze away, but this time, he can’t.

They’re so close now, too close. Steve can feel James’s breath on his face. It’s sweet, minty, like he brushed his teeth before he came hunting for Steve. He doesn’t know what the time is, but it was well past midnight when he stopped tossing around in tousled sheets and it’s been hours, and James woke up for him, came looking for him, and it’s concern sharpening the lines of this familiar, beloved face, and Steve—

Steve doesn’t think.

James has soft lips, softer than they look.

It’s nothing like the time he kissed Bucky, when the two of them were clumsy and burning from the heat of their bodies pressed together. This is chaste, a fleeting press of closed lips, and Steve wants so badly to linger, but the first touch of his mouth to James’s is a cold shock to his heart.

He stumbles back a step.

James has wide eyes and an open mouth, wearing his shock openly. Steve waits, forcing himself not to flee, but the anger doesn’t come. Instead, James just blink and tilts his head, staring at Steve like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“Sorry,” Steve chokes out. “Fuck, I’m—sorry.”

“Are you?” James asks quietly.

Steve opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t say yes and he can’t say no, neither would be honest, and he doesn’t have the words to tell James that he’s wanted him for a long time but there’s the taste of a ghost haunting his lips.

James waits but not forever. He’s not the type. He gives Steve one of those not-smiles and leaves, his steps enviably steady as he strides out of the basement.

-

They don’t talk about that either.

James doesn’t act any differently towards him. They were never the kind of roommates—or sorta-friends—to have heart-to-hearts over coffee or whatever, but they were comfortable with each other, had grown into it after a few, rocky months full of accidental attempted murder and varied bruises. James maintains that pleasant veneer, but Steve can’t, not when he can barely look at James without his lips aching.

If it were just a kiss, Steve could have handled it, but he can still feel Bucky’s skin under his fingertips, taste the heat of him on his tongue. He doesn’t even know where to begin the untangling of everything he feels for James and everything he felt for Bucky and all the places where the two meet.

He's grateful when Hill calls him with a mission. It’s in London, and it’s just Steve, Sam, and Clint—less of a full Avengers intervention than some carefully doled out destruction. More importantly, it’s at least a solid week away from James and their house, and the timing couldn’t be better.

James just nods when Steve tells him. But when he looks Steve in the eye, it’s clear he knows what he’s thinking.

“James—”

James waits expectably, more patient that Steve has ever been in his entire life, but Steve’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and the words won’t come out.

“Be safe,” James says in the end, unsmiling but sincere.

“You too,” Steve chokes out, unthinking.

For a second, James looks like he wants to laugh.

-

He almost breaks and tells Sam, who knows something’s up and keeps eyeing Steve with that expression that says he’s concerned and trying very hard not to be obvious about it. Steve avoids it for the length of the mission, throwing himself into it with his head and his heart, but once it’s over and they’re all alive and uninjured—except for Clint who’s got a broken thumb simply because he was born under a cursed star and cannot complete a mission without incurring at least a papercut—it’s much harder not to have that conversation.

“It’s hard,” Steve admits on the Quinjet, folding faster under the force of Sam’s understanding silence than he would at any attempt at confrontation. “Bucky—I liked the kid. And I’m glad James is back, relieved as hell, but—I miss the kid too.”

Sam nods, eyes sharp on Steve’s face.

“Is it just missing?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

Sam’s a good guy, but he doesn’t pull his punches.

“I know you’ve got issues with Barnes and that camp in the 40s. And now you’ve seen who he was before Hydra, before even the war. You’re a martyr down to your bones, man. Think I don’t know where your mind’s going?”

They’ve had variations of this conversation before, though not in a long while. Steve was hoping not to revisit this, but it’s been inevitable since he first found Bucky passed out in James’s gear.

And Steve is resigned, by now, to the mingled blessing and curse that’s having friends who care about him and are too perceptive by far.

He gives Sam a small smile and gets an exasperated huff in return.

“How’s things with Barnes?” he asks.

“Good,” Steve lies automatically. Then, at Sam’s skeptical expression, he amends that to, “Sort of. A little awkward.”

“No shit.”

“We’ll be fine,” Steve says, trying to believe it himself. “We’ve had worse.”

-

He’s not wrong.

Steve spends a night in the tower before going home, but James is not even there. And when he returns, it’s like the kiss never even happened, the normalcy of earlier doubling, somehow, like they’re both subconsciously trying to erase those two minutes from existence.

Steve doesn’t want it gone though. He finds himself hoping for James to bring it up, to force a confrontation, and it’s petty and unfair to put that on him, but God, Steve feels like he’s dying with how much he wants to touch James. His attraction was always something that simmered gently in his veins, but even as time and growing affection made his want more intense, it was never as uncontrollable as it is now. Steve can’t be under the same roof as James without the man haunting his thoughts, which would be fine if not for how half the time, it’s not James but Bucky that smiles in Steve’s mind.

It is part guilt; Steve’s not denying that. But a lot of it is just that sense of loss. He got to know that bright-eyed kid, and now he’s gone. Steve feels like he doesn’t even have the right to mourn him, but he does.

 _I’ll remember_ , he whispers into the empty space beside him, every night before he tries to sleep.

It never feels enough.

-

He comes home one morning, after a long, hard run, and finds James on the couch, hunched over something.

“G’morning,” Steve greets automatically, taking off his shoes. “You’re up early.”

James doesn’t reply, which isn’t uncharacteristic per se but is concerning all the same because when James goes still and quiet, it means he’s in a bad space. But then he looks up, and his eyes are bright and clear, pinning Steve in place with their intensity.

“I wondered,” James says softly, “about the sudden interest.”

“What?”

James sits up straight, and Steve sees, then, that the object in his lap is Steve’s sketchbook. He eyes the bookshelf anyway, knowing what he’ll find even before he sees the empty slot where his most recent sketchbook usually rests.

He should be angry, maybe, but this doesn’t feel like an invasion of privacy. Steve has never hidden that book, not even after he filled a page or ten with charcoal sketches of James. He should have. He’s sure James wouldn’t have gone looking, can’t even imagine what possessed him to open it now, but Steve couldn’t bear to touch the pages live with Bucky’s dancing eyes and the sweet curves of his body, not after he was gone, so he just put the book away and didn’t think about it.

It's yet another mistake to add to the climbing tally.

“James,” he starts, heart in his throat, “I can explain.”

“Don’t need much of one,” James returns, a corner of his mouth curling up, the expression distinctly unpleasant. “I can see it just fine.”

“James—”

James holds up a hand, a harsh request for silence that Steve’s helpless to disobey. James is looking down at the book and from his vantage point, Steve can’t see which page it is. Some of the sketches are innocent—Bucky’s smiling face, his body wrapped in a blanket as he sits riveted to the television screen. Others, less so; Steve found his pencil sketching lines of Bucky’s bare body, nothing particularly suggestive, but he knows how he draws, knows everything those stark lines show. Steve could never talk sweet, but his fingers always did a better job saying what his tongue couldn’t.

James put the book away. Steve’s breath burns his lungs.

“Can’t fault you, I guess,” James says thoughtfully, so perfectly calm that it can’t possibly be real. “He’s young and pretty. Whole. I can see the appeal.”

There’s an instant where Steve is stunned to silence. It’s not that James is wrong—Bucky was young and pretty and whole. But that wasn’t the appeal, not the way James means it. That he thinks it is—it hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does.

James looks up, and Steve doesn’t know what kind of expression he’s wearing, but whatever it is makes James’s mouth tighten into a bitter twist.

“No,” Steve snaps before James can say anything else that will pierce him like daggers. “That wasn’t—he was _you_ , James.”

And no, that’s not what he meant to say, and it’s not quite right either, but before Steve can even think of correcting it, James shakes his head, a sharp and violent motion.

“No. He wasn’t. And I’m not him. Never will be. I buried that ghost a long time ago, Steve. I won’t dig up him, not even for you.” There’s a flash of anger when James says that, but it vanishes the next second, and the trembling look he shoots Steve breaks his heart. “Please don’t make me want to.”

Steve staggers back a step, feeling those words like a physical blow.

“I wouldn’t,” he whispers. He clears his throat and tries again, “James, I never—”

James nods jerkily. He’s out of the room before Steve cab draw in air to speak, and his bedroom door closes quietly behind him, but the whisper-soft sound deafens Steve all the same.

-

They can’t _not_ talk about it, not this time. Steve’s painfully aware of that for every moment he spends camped out in the corridor by James’s room, a mirror to how he found James that night he came to fetch his weapons.

The sketchbook is in his lap. It’s open to a blank page, somewhere near the end. Steve rubs his thumb along the bare, white expanse, mind half in the past, with the versions of himself that scribbled James and Bucky to life.

He flips the pages.

It lands on a sketch of James. It’s an innocent picture—James in his gear, the upper half of face dark from the paint he smears around his eye. Steve didn’t draw his domino mask in this picture. He remembers the day that inspired this. They were fresh from a fight, and James took off his mask and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, and Steve found his mouth dry and hands clammy, rooted to the spot in awe of the sight. James in battle has a savage sort of beauty, but in the aftermath, he’s tired and human and exquisite, and Steve never stood a snowball’s chance in hell, did he?

He thinks of Peggy, with her blood-red mouth and gunpowder fingers, thinks of telling Bucky ‘ _seems I have a type._ ’

He flips again, and of course, it’s Bucky this time. It’s the view of him Steve had, that ill-advised morning. Bucky’s eyes are swollen from sleep and dark with want, and it’s hardly the filthiest memory Steve has of him, but there’s a suggestiveness to the curve of his lips and the jut of his Adam’s apple. There’s desire in these lines, and for all that a part of Steve is cursing himself for ever putting his pencil to paper, the rest of him is drinking it in, his mind’s eye reconstructing the memory of that morning with brutal clarity.

The pencil, tucked into the notebook’s spiral-coil, finds its way into Steve’s hand without him quite knowing how.

It’s a bad idea, but he opens a blank page and lets his memories run loose.

Bucky takes shape in shapes and shadows—the tousled splay of his hair, the soft curve of his buttocks, the arch of his spine, the tight curl of his toes. It’s a mirror image of how Steve found him when he emerged from the bathroom, washcloth in hand. Steve doesn’t sketch the trickle of come between his cheeks or the bruises on his hips from where Steve gripped too tight.

It's still obscene, still beautiful, and Steve’s eyes burn.

 _I’ll just be gone_ , Bucky said.

The pencil snaps in two.

The door opens as if on cue.

Steve wants to slam the book shut, but he doesn’t. Let James see. He deserves to. And Steve isn’t ashamed, though he should be. Shame would bring regret with it, and he doesn’t regret Bucky. He might go insane if he tried.

“This is pathetic, even for you,” James says, eyes on Steve’s face. “Go away, Steve.”

Steve’s not bothered by the insult. This _is_ pathetic.

“No,” he says.

James’ eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth for Steve assumes will be a verbal lashing, but then James’s eyes drop to the sketchbook and widen, the whole of him freezing. There’s a breathless moment when he just stares.

When he holds out his hand, Steve finds himself handing the book over as if in a trance.

James looks at the sketch for a long time. His eyes barely move, and he barely blinks. Steve absently fidgets with the broken pencil, but a too-tight squeeze grinds it to dust. It slips through his fingers, and he’s left with a strange residue in his palm.

Steve takes a deep breath.

James lowers the book. The spell breaks.

“He wasn’t you,” Steve says. “And you’re not him. I think I know that better than anyone but you.”

James meets his eyes, and there’s a demand in them. Steve is helpless not to answer, but as words he’s choked down for so damn long finally slips out, it’s relief that sweeps through his chest.

“I wanted him. And I wanted you, long before I met him. I told him too. There was nothing sudden about my interest, James.”

There’s surprise on James’s face, vivid and real for an instant before it’s swallowed by a carefully constructed poker face. He frowns, eyeing Steve intently as if to spot a lie, but Steve’s words were so honest that it hurt his heart to speak them, and he holds James’s stare without blinking.

“Alright,” James says softly. “Tell me what happened.”

-

Steve doesn’t actually tell him what happened, not at first.

He tries. He manages to say Bucky’s name but that’s as far as he gets before his throat closes up, dry and almost painful. James takes one look at his face and sighs explosively, but he seems more sad than angry, which is confusing enough that Steve shuts down a little.

They end up on James’s bed somehow, lying side by side, not talking and barely touching. But Steve can feel the warmth of him; James is solid and real, like this, and Steve’s fingertips ache with the need to touch him.

He pushes himself up to his elbows, body turned to the side. James watches him move with sharp blue eyes, but he doesn’t stop Steve and doesn’t move either, lying there placidly—patient, waiting. Steve puts one hand on the other side of James and is shocked at his own presumption as he hovers over him, the space between them generous but electric.

James continues to watch, giving away nothing, so gorgeous that it hurts. Steve wants to devour him whole and preserve him in glass, and he doesn’t know what to do with either impulse. He’s used to wanting James, but the desire that used to a low, familiar thrum is now a harsh, aching demand, as if those nights with Bucky tore open the floodgates.

“Can I kiss you?”

James briefly shuts his eyes.

“It’s a bad idea,” he says. “Isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Steve admits. “I’m asking anyway.”

James laughs. There’s not an ounce of humor in the sound. It sounds like it hurts coming out.

“You don’t even know,” he chokes out, mouth twisting into a crooked grin, “do you?”

“What?”

James’s hand darts up, quick as a snake. It snags Steve by the collar and drags him down, and it’s not a kiss so much as a crash, but the moment the soft warmth of James’s mouth slots against his, Steve’s lost.

It’s nothing like the tentative, impromptu kiss of earlier. Steve rests his weight on one arm and cups James’s face with the other, and they tilt their heads, and it’s perfect, between one breath and the next, their lips moving together sweet and easy. James tastes sweet, like chocolate, and oh, yes, he eats sweets when he’s sad, and fuck, Steve made him sad, didn’t he?

“I’m sorry,” he says, breaking the kiss with a hushed whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

James makes a wounded sound but doesn’t respond, surging up instead, teeth sinking into Steve’s lip, drawing blood. Steve licks it up and licks into James, sliding past the wet part of his lips into the sweet heat inside. James opens for him with a gasp, letting Steve taste him deep and dirty, and he makes the sweetest noises too, gasping when Steve flicks his tongue against the ridge of his teeth and squirming bodily at the teasing sting of Steve’s teeth.

Something passes through Steve’s mind—a memory and a horror—and Steve resurfaces again, this time to ask, “Have you, before?”

It’s not the most coherent phrasing, but Steve’s head isn’t coherent right now. James seems to understand him anyway because they fell, almost accidentally, into the same wavelength and never tried to break free.

“I remember that I have,” James tells him, long lashes sweeping over his pretty eyes. “But I don’t remember doing any of it.”

“And—and now?”

James lets out a huffing breath.

“Steve, you and Nat are the only people I can stand to be touched by. Maybe Sam, on a very good day. You think I’ve went out to get fucked?”

Steve was asking about anything—kissing, dating, and, yes, fucking—but to hear James phrase it like that sends something sweet and molten through his veins. Heat pulses in his gut, his groin, and with Steve’s lower half pressed to James, there’s no way he won’t feel the stirring there.

James’s smile is small and knowing. He doesn’t look displeased or disgusted.

“I didn’t want to either,” James continues, still smiling that quiet smile. “Not with a stranger.”

There’s an implication in there, things James isn’t saying, things Steve can hear all the same.

“I’m not a stranger,” he says.

James’s smile widens.

“No. You’re not.”

Steve leans down, slowly, giving James ample time to speak, to pull away and change his mind. But James just sighs into the kiss, eyes fluttering shut, his mouth hot and sweet under Steve’s.

They kiss for what feels like hours, until the sweetness fades from James’s tongue and all that remains is the warm taste of a willing mouth. Steve bites bruises into his jaw and throat, watching red and pink bloom on all that pale skin, throat tight with the knowledge that the marks will be gone all too soon. Bucky’s skin clung stubbornly to the bruises, but he was gone before Steve got the chance to see them fade back into his flesh. With James, it’s the same even as it’s entirely different because he won’t go anywhere but the serum in his blood will swallow each mark in a matter of hours.

And Steve needs to stop comparing the two, stop thinking, but he promised Bucky that he wouldn’t forget, and he’s still terrified.

Steve presses a wet kiss to James’s pounding pulse and buries his face there. James’s skin smells like dried saliva, all Steve’s fault, but he’s hungry for it, dragging his nose along the curve of his throat, sinking his teeth into a soft earlobe.

James lets out a shaky breath, hands digging into Steve’s back. They rest politely over his t-shirt. Steve’s the same, one hand tangled in James’s hair and the other braced on the bed, fingers curled tight against the urge to roam over bare, heated skin. He wants to take James between his hands and swallow him whole, but he’s terrified to push and cross a line.

He licks his lips and James shudders under him. He’s got dark eyes and pink cheeks, half-undone from nothing but Steve’s mouth, and he wants so badly to see him bare and ruined, begging and wordless under Steve, above him, around him, wants to consume and be consumed.

Steve’s never wanted easy, never knew how not to let his desire rage like wildfire.

But James makes him want to be soft too, the same way Bucky did, something about those wide blue eyes and trembling lips reaching into the softest parts of him and tugging hard.

Steve cups James’s face, thumbing his plump lips, heart doing a painful flip when they part under the touch, warm air brushing Steve’s skin. Steve slides his hand further down, trailing the tips over the curve of James’s throat. He stops right under his collarbone, curling his fingers into the neck of his t-shirt.

“Can I?”

James sits up, so sudden that Steve loses his balance and falls on him. But James is strong enough that he can keep them both upright, and when Steve regains himself and leans back, James is watching him with an amused smile.

Before Steve can say anything, James takes off his t-shirt, baring his torso in a single, smooth movement.

Steve stares, he can’t not. James is nothing like Bucky, stocky where Bucky was lean, packed with muscle where Bucky was soft. He’s more…developed too, and Steve feels like a goddamn pervert, staring at the fleshy swell of James’s pecs. His thoughts, never innocent to begin with, slip and slide into the deepest parts of the gutter, drowning him in a flash-flood of filth.

When he drags his eyes back to more polite territory, he finds James with red cheeks and wide eyes.

Steve has to kiss him. James hums into it, and when Steve gets his hands on James’s chest, the sound sharpens into a shocked gasp. Steve squeezes tentatively, heat swirling in his gut at the pleasant give of it under his hands. James, in the beginning, had a body made with only use in mind, strong but uncared for, no love in those hard lines of muscle. He’s filled out better over the years, face less gaunt and body more padded, but it’s never been so obvious as now, when Steve’s got him all soft and sweet in his grip.

He squeezes again, bolder when James makes no effort to pull away. A beat later, he pushes into it, squirming against Steve without breaking their kiss. Steve pushes closer, pulls James harder against him, and it’s a little miracle, the way their bodies fit together as if they were born into it.

Steve loses his shirt too, and he doesn’t quite remember how he goes from being half in James’s lap to lying on top of him, pinning him to the mattress as they grind together, but fuck, he could live there, braced against James’s solid warmth as their clothed cocks clumsily move together. A part of him wants to pull his mouth away from the addictive arch of James’s throat and check in, but James is bucking and panting under him, fingers scoring fiery trails down Steve’s back, and he decides his lips are of better use just like this.

He does manage to snake a hand between their bodies and push his sweatpants down, grateful for his tendency to forgo underwear in the house. He hesitates on the waistband of James’s shorts, pressing his knuckles to the jut of his hipbone in silent question.

Under his mouth, James’s throat moves as he swallows.

“Yeah,” he rasps. “Yes, fuck.”

Steve does pull away then, just a little, aching to see James. His mouth runs dry at the sight because god, he’s pretty, long and uncut, flushed a pretty red and wet at the tip. Pride rushes through him, strong and blissfully uncomplicated, because Steve did this, his mouth and hands brought pleasure to his gorgeous man, and for a moment, all his ghosts vanish.

He slots their dicks together, hissing through his teeth at the strange heat of James pressing along the length of him. When he wraps his hand around both of them, James is the one who cries out, the sound soft and gut-deep.

“I’ve got you,” Steve says, mouthing at James’s jaw.

James sucks in a shuddering breath, leaking prettily against Steve’s palm.

Neither of them lasts long. Steve loses himself in James, in the sight of his face and the sounds he makes, and when he comes, it’s with Steve’s name caught, half-realized, on his lips. Wet heat drenches his fingers, his cock, and Steve follows James over the edge with a cry that’s more shock than pleasure.

He shudders through it, kissing James good and deep, the taste of him flooding Steve’s mouth as his body pulses with the last of his release.

They’re both soft and messy in the aftermath. Steve knows he can go again, wouldn’t even need much. Maybe James is the same, maybe he’s not, but he’s panting and sweat-soaked, eyes dark and hazy, so Steve doesn’t push, gently letting them both go and rolling off James to collapse beside him.

He fights off the post-orgasmic bliss to stay focused, eyes on James. This is a first for him, in some ways, and the irony isn’t lost on Steve. Bucky was still right—he had his firsts without ever knowing Steve because that boy lived and died a long time ago. But James—James is here, real and true, letting Steve kiss him and touch him, have him in ways he no longer remembers. Steve doesn’t believe in fate, hasn’t believed in even God for a long damn time, but it’s hard not to look at James and think of Bucky and wonder if some things are meant to be.

“Steve,” is what James says once he finds his words. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

He sounds dazed. Steve valiantly tries not to preen.

“Good?” he asks, playing at casual.

James looks at him like he sees right through him.

“Passable,” he says, smiling crookedly. And then, “What did you do to my throat, you animal?”

Steve bites his lips and doesn’t say that he was—and still is—itching with the urge to set his teeth to every available inch of James until he can’t so much as breathe without feeling Steve tug at his skin.

He tries to be sweet, kissing along James’s shoulder and throat, but his mouth finds James’s and licks into the heat of him. He opens up easy and bares his throat, an invitation Steve can’t ignore, and it’s so natural to just kiss down the length of him, and the last of his good intentions sail out the window when a teasing gaze of teeth to James’s nipple pulls a soft, keening cry out of him.

Steve’s hungry, ravenous and half-mad with it, sucking bruises on James’s chest and tugging with his teeth at his nipples. He’s drunk on James’s reactions, the electric shudders of his body and the trembling moans that leave his mouth.

When he pulls back to just look, James’s chest is marked with varying shades of pink and red. James catches him admiring, and his face is flushed too, making his darkened eyes seem even darker, twin pools of molten want.

“Why are you obsessed with my chest?” James asks, and he doesn’t sound like he’s really asking, just talking for the sake of it, but Steve answers before he can help it.

“Pretty pair of tits, honey, I can’t help it.”

The noise James makes is inhuman. It shudders down Steve’s spine, igniting the fire in his gut. He kisses him, quick and hard, and retraces his path down James’s body, but this time, he doesn’t stop at his chest, sucking wetly down his belly and along his hips. He licks up the mess there, skirting James’s hardening cock until he’s trembling under Steve, begging sweetly with little gasps of air.

He sinks his teeth into the soft flesh of James’s thigh, biting down hard just to hear him cry. The skin of his inner thighs is softer, more sensitive, and Steve takes advantage of it, worrying bruises into the pale skin. James marks up so easy, almost like he’s compensating for how little the marks will last. Steve doesn’t pull away until the insides of both his thighs are red and pink, marking the beginnings of violent bruises that won’t let James walk smooth, at least not for a little while.

“Steve,” James calls, voice shaking around the name. “Please, fuck, _please_.”

Steve’s weak to the sight of a pretty man begging so sweet.

James still isn’t all the way hard when Steve takes him in, but the touch of his mouth has him swelling further. Steve laves his tongue along the silky heat of him, noticing without quite meaning to that James is bigger than Bucky, the length and girth a bit more. The serum didn’t leave Steve untouched anywhere, and he wants to ask James but doesn’t, willing his mind to go dark and quiet as he sucks James down into his throat.

James tries to buck up, splitting the silence with a shuddering cry, but Steve pins him down by the hips, digging his thumbs into his hipbones. James can fight if he wants, more than a match for Steve’s strength, but he doesn’t, settling down with a soft whimper. He squirms, helpless little motions, but he doesn’t push for more, taking what Steve gives him with shaky legs and soft cries. He begs too, Steve’s name interspersed with bitten-off pleas, and Steve’s of half a mind to let him come just like this, spill deep down Steve’s throat, but he doesn’t know how many James has left in him and he wants to make this last.

A pitiful whine follows him when he pulls away, letting James slip out of his mouth with a wet pop. He licks at the head, a dirty comfort, and cuts off his own name on James’s mouth by grabbing his ass and lifting.

It’s easy as anything to bend him in half. James stares up at him with shocked eyes and a parted mouth, but he’s quick to take hold of his legs, pressing them to his torso and leaving his lower parts exposed to Steve.

Steve presses his cock to the side of one thigh and licks a wet stripe down the base of it, sucking messily at one of his swollen balls. James’s scent floods his nose, dark and musky, but even sweeter are the sounds he makes, wordless and high-pitched, each out seemingly torn out of his throat. Steve drinks them in as he mouths down James’s taint, spreading his cheeks wider to expose his puckered hole.

He does hesitate for a moment, wondering if it’s going too far, but he can hear James heave for breath and stifle whimpers, and Christ, Steve _wants_.

He presses the flat of his tongue against James’s hole.

“ _Steve_.”

It’s almost a scream, and James follows it with his body, flinching away from Steve’s tongue. But he’s pushing back the next second, grinding into Steve’s mouth, his sounds climbing in pitch. Steve gives him what he needs, what they both want, lapping at James’s hole and tracing the rim with his tongue, eager for each throaty cry that James can’t hold in. Steve feels hungrier with every passing moment, and James gets more desperate, writhing madly, body reduced to a thing of clenching pleasure.

He’s hot inside and so tight, but he opens easily for Steve’s tongue, sloppy wet from spit. James falls abruptly silent, but Steve’s ears are sharper than any man’s and he can hear the whines trapped in his throat, stifled for lack of air.

A part of him wants to raise his head and look at James, take him in with both eyes, but he’s loath to take his mouth away from James, addicted to the easy give of his twitching hole.

Steve eats him out until his jaw is aching and his dick is throbbing a hot demand between his legs, until James is sopping wet inside and bucking his hips desperately against Steve’s face.

Steve resurfaces, panting, and catches James’s gaze, breath stuttering at the half-gone state of him.

“James,” he calls gently. “Look at me.”

James is looking, but his hazy stare goes right through Steve. He can see the effort it takes for him to focus, blinking and tossing his head to the side, finally meeting Steve’s eyes with an expression that’s almost agonized.

He’s beautiful.

“Tell me what you want,” Steve says, voice thick with barely restrained hunger. It would be so easy to fall upon James and take and take and _take_. He’d let Steve, that’s easy to see, his body slick with sweat and sweetly pliant.

“You,” James answers, slightly slurred.

Steve’s heart does a painful flip.

“Where?” Steve asks, needing to know. “Here?”

He cups James’s cock against his thigh, mouth running dry at the solid heat of it. The tip is wet, the head gleaming with precome. It wouldn’t take long; a few strokes with his hand or the hot suction of his mouth, and James would be lost.

But he shakes his head, strands of brown falling into his face, sticking to the sweat gleaming on his forehead.

Steve swallows, throat clicking. He drags his fingers down James’s cock, over his balls, and further down, pressing two fingers against his damp hole.

“Here?”

James shudders violently.

“Please,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Tell me.”

“ _Yes_.”

Steve slides a finger into him, and James is wet enough, open enough, that it slips in easy. Steve watches him keenly, helpless not to remember Bucky, his closed eyes and frantic sounds. James lets out a shaky breath, teeth sinking into his lower lip.

“More,” he says, almost as soon as Steve’s finger is knuckle-deep.

“Lube,” Steve hears himself say. “We need lube.”

James doesn’t even look, just reaches for his nightstand and roots around in the first drawer, fist emerging victorious in less than a minute. A trembling arm holds out the little bottle for Steve, who takes it, flashing hot when their fingers brush. It’s a simple intimacy, but it shudders electric down his spine.

“You’ve done this before?” Steve asks, only half a question, and slips another finger into James before he can answer.

“Yes,” James hisses, lips pulling back to bare gritted teeth. “Di—different, when it’s not my hand.”

He imagines it, James with his fingers inside him, his little hole wet and tight, his cock dripping between his legs.

Steve’s only human. He crooks his fingers, driving them in deep, and his cock aches in sympathy when James arches off the bed, breaths climbing into staccato gasps. He gives him another before James can ask for it, and it’s a tighter fit but James takes it. Steve blinks and sees Bucky, his face screwed up into agonized pleasure.

He swallows the ghost, and it burns his heart.

James reacts with a startled cry when Steve pulls his fingers out, all at once and sudden. He spreads his legs wider, arching his hips, and there’s something about the instinctual ease of it that catches Steve’s heart in a vice-grip.

“We don’t have to do this now,” Steve tells him, barely recognizing his own voice. “We have—we have time. I don’t want to push you.”

At first, James just blinks at him, uncomprehending. Steve sees the words sink it, and the expression that follows can’t seem to decide whether it’s exasperation or irritation.

“If I didn’t want anything, Steve, I promise you’d know. Do you wanna stop?”

Does he?

He was Bucky’s— _his_ Bucky’s—first.

Because life is strange and fucked up and unfair, he’ll also be James’s first, in all the ways that count.

God, yes, he wants it. He can’t breathe with how much he wants it. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, but it also sure as hell doesn’t mean Steve’s going to do the smart thing and stop.

“No,” he says, squirting lube into his palm and fisting his cock, something crowing triumphantly inside him when James’s eyes catch on the sight and widen. “But said it was a bad idea, didn’t you?”

James drags his eyes back to Steve’s face, but it takes visible effort for him to focus, and ain’t that a rush?

“When has that stopped you, Rogers?”

Steve laughs, can’t help it. This right here’s why he was so fucking gone on James before Bucky Barnes was ever in the picture, these moments where James looks at him and _sees_ him with the same acuity Natasha wields like a weapon combined with the softness that makes Sam so easy to love.

“Tell me you want it,” Steve says, poised over James, cockhead resting at his hole.

James looks perilously close to rolling his eyes, but Steve rolls his hips and pulls away, and it’s instantaneous, the shift, James suddenly bereft and full of aching heat.

“I want it,” he gasps. “Yes, god, fuck me.”

Steve does.

James is _tight_ , and he takes Steve like a dream, clenching wet and hot around him. Steve wants to be gentle, good and sweet, but James rolls his hips and shoves himself down on Steve’s cock, and Steve slams into him like he wants him split in two.

There are no ghosts here, just James and his wild hair and wide eyes.

“Fuck,” he chokes out, both hands clenched in his dark mane. “You’re—the toys don’t fucking compare. You’re _hot_.”

It trails off into a high-pitched whine, and Steve laughs, the sound shocked out of him.

“Flattered,” he says, somehow, words a trial when his brain is a molten pulse in his dick. “Tell me I can move, fuck, you’re—”

“Yes,” James gasps immediately. “Give it to me, c’m—ah!”

Steve gives it to him, and he tries to hold back, he does, but James is writhing like a live wire under him, stomach muscles clenching hard, fingers tearing at his own hair and at the sheets. He’s wild and alive, and he’s Steve’s match in every way that can be counted, and Steve slams into him, human limits shattered, the animal that takes its place a thing of burning want.

It’s a little like dying, a lot like living.

James spills first, his metal fist locked painfully tight around his pretty dick. Steve fucks him through it, blood soaring at the sounds punched out of James when Steve rams deep into him, but he doesn’t last long after, can’t, thrown brutally over the edge by James’s clenching heat and frenzied cries.

He sinks his teeth into James’s thigh and muffles a shout in his flesh, holding his breath through an orgasm that rips through him. James fills up around him, warm and wet, and Steve fucks erratically into him with his softening cock, keening when the sensation drags needle-sharp along the length of him.

He doesn’t collapse on James but only barely. Steve feels like wrung towel, panting into the pillow beside James’s equally worn body.

They stumble into a kiss; Steve doesn’t know who moved first, doesn’t care, not when James’s mouth is moving so sweetly against his. It’s lazy, easy, and Steve loses himself into it until he resurfaces and finds himself with his face tucked into the curve of James’s throat, spine warm and liquid from the fingers rubbing firm shapes into his scalp.

“No regrets?” his mouth asks of its own damned volition.

James laughs, soft and tired.

“No. You’re a good lay.”

It’s Steve’s turn to make an undignified noise. He buries his face in James’s neck again. James gives his hair a playful tug before returning to scritching at the scalp. Steve melts into it, into James, making a contented noise in his throat.

“Should clean up,” he says, making no effort to extricate himself from Steve’s octopus hold.

“Later,” Steve says, pushing his whole body against James as if trying to burrow into him. “You’re comfortable.”

“Thanks,” comes the amused reply.

He drifts off without quite meaning to, cocooned in James’s softness and warmth.

-

He wakes up alone.


	2. i will come back from the dead for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll have to tell me about it someday, Steve,” James says quietly. “I can’t be a ghost again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go, a well-earned happy ending (with a dash of bittersweetness).

Steve spends two hours under a hot shower. He doesn’t mean to, but the mind-numbing heat of the water sluicing over his skin keeps him in place long after the day’s mess is washed off.

When he drags himself back into bed, he can hear noises in the house—steady footsteps and utensils clinking. James doesn’t cook often, but he’s far better at it than Steve. He lies face-down on his bed and listens, trying to think of nothing.

It's his own fault. He can’t say he doesn’t know why waking up alone with James’s scent still in his nostrils hit so hard, but he never expected his reaction would be a biting chill racing along his skin as his heart tried to beat its way out of his ribs. He knew, still does, that James can’t be gone, swallowed into the fabric of reality the way Bucky was. Logic didn’t help much.

Venturing out of his room completes what the shower started. James is as solid as anything, stirring something on the stove, wearing the garish kiss-the-cook apron Sam got him. Relief hits so hard that Steve’s knees almost buckle. He makes it to the table, collapsing gracelessly into the chair.

He almost misses the slight stiffening of James’s frame—almost.

James doesn’t say anything. Steve holds his tongue. He wishes he could take his eyes off the man, pretend at dignity, but he can’t. His gut’s still knotted up, the sight of James reliving the pressure but not entirely. Steve’s got a feeling that something’s not quite right, and as much as he wants to write it off as paranoia, he trusts his instincts too much to allow himself that illusion.

Time passes in a quite haze as he watches James cook.

When he turns around and shoves a plate in front of Steve, he eats what’s on it without tasting a thing. James eats opposite him, but he never looks up, never makes eye contact.

After dinner, Steve gravitates automatically to the pile of dishes in the sink. James leaves him there, exiting the kitchen quietly. Steve doesn’t start moving until he hears James’s bedroom door slam shut.

The work is simple but good. Steve scrubs and dries and doesn’t think of anything, and when he runs out of dishes to clean, he wipes down the kitchen counters and the dining table too, keeping at it until it’s all too clear that no amount of wiping will make them cleaner than they already are.

He scurries back to his bedroom and the ghosts there.

-

Sleep is a distant dream, and Steve is contemplating going down to the gym when there’s a knock on his door. He stands up, eager but unsteady, and pauses to take a deep breath before going to open the door.

It’s James; who else could it be?

He has Steve’s sketchbook in his hand.

He holds it out, and Steve takes it numbly, blinking at it and looking back at James. It’s hard to believe James came and knocked just to give this back when leaving it on the couch or even the floor in front of Steve’s room would have worked just as well and sent a clearer message.

Steve doesn’t know what expression is on his face, but whatever it is makes James’s whole face soften, its stoic lines gentling into something tender and sad. He covers Steve’s hand with his own, metal fingers slotting in between his on the cover of the sketchbook.

“You’ll have to tell me about it someday, Steve,” he says quietly. “I can’t be a ghost again.”

He leans in for a kiss, and Steve lets him. It’s chaste but it lingers, and when James pulls back, Steve’s heart hurts. James stays for another minute, forehead pressed to Steve’s, and Steve finds that he wants to speak but that his mouth won’t open.

James leaves.

-

Steve understands; he really does. To say James has identity issues would be the understatement of the century. He’s a man dismantled, who put himself back together with sheer willpower and meager scraps of information. There are records on Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th, captured at Azzano, killed at Kreischberg.

But James never died.

Dugan used to talk about him sometimes, mostly when he was drunk. A man with a boy’s grin and eyes too old for it. The best sniper he ever saw. Affection, pride, and grief always tinged the words, and Steve ached for him then, but the guilt of having wasted time as a dancing monkey was worn and familiar to him by that point. And the war taught him, first and foremost, that he couldn’t save everyone.

But it was one thing to think of James Barnes as one of the dead, another entirely to know that Steve and Peggy and the rest of the SSR, later S.H.I.E.L.D., missed Zola’s atrocities so entirely that they let a man be broken and reshaped and used for seven fucking decades.

 _I can’t be a ghost again_ , he said, and Steve doesn’t know how to tell him that he would never, ever want him to be.

James will never forgive Steve because in his eyes, there no fault to assign and nothing to forgive. Steve isn’t as kind, but remembering James’s sad smile last night, he can’t help but wonder if he has to be.

-

It’s not so bad, the next few days. It’s awkward at times, can’t not be, and there’s no conveniently timed mission to give them both space. Steve has to attend a press conference, and James spends a day in the tower to get his arm looked at, but for the most part, it’s just them in their Brooklyn house, talking and smiling while skirting awkwardly around the unsaid words hanging heavy in the air.

Steve’s curious, in a morbid kind of way, about how long it will last.

He never gets to find out because one evening, he comes home after meeting Bruce for a monthly session of tea and bitching at a café and barely has time to unlace his shoes before a harsh, pained shout from James’s room makes his blood run cold.

He doesn’t stop to think.

He should have, maybe, but he hears James cry out, and he moves, bursting through the door, breaking the lock under the strength of his fist.

James is on all fours on the bed, naked, looking up at Steve with wide, shocked eyes.

“Steve?” he chokes out. “What are you—”

Steve can’t answer the unfinished question, mouth too dry for words. He sees, now, what he couldn’t in the initial rush. James is impaled on a fake cock stuck to the headboard, his own dick hanging heavy between his spread legs. It’s no mystery what made him cry out earlier.

Steve shuts the door with some vague notions of protecting James’s privacy, as if there’s anyone other than Steve to protect it from.

He takes a step forward, horribly fascinated, and at every moment, he expects James to tell him, outraged, to get the fuck out, but those darkened eyes just watch him intently, narrowed in what might be desire or calculation or both.

Steve clearly sees the moment James comes to a decision. He _moves_ , shoving himself back against the toy, a shuddering cry escaping through gritted teeth. The sound jolts down Steve’s spine, settling into heat at the base of his dick. It starts to swell, surprise and guilt overthrown by a surge of desire.

James bites his lips and moves his hips, and they’re obscene, the sounds—the slick noises of the toy inside him and the quiet cries James can’t hold in. He never looks away from Steve, but his expression changes from heated calculation to slack-jawed pleasure, and the last of Steve’s self-control dissipates.

He's across the room in a flash. James is at the center of the bed, and Steve only hesitates for a second before climbing on, knee-walking toward where James is setting his blood on fire.

James sees him approach and moans, and Steve doesn’t think he’s imagining how his hips start working faster, James fucking himself harder on that toy. He remembers James saying the toys don’t compare and has to bite his lips on something he’d regret later. The restraint doesn’t extend to his hand, which winds itself in James’s long, dark hair and grips tight, forcing his throat into a sharp arch. It earns him a high, shocked sound and James’s cheeks flushing a deep red. Steve waits for a protest, for James to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, but James peers at him from those damnably long lashes and licks his lips and _fuck_ —

Steve fumbles with his zipper, the simple act suddenly the hardest thing he’s ever done. James is no help, not with how his eyes widen at the sight and how he gasps, soft and strangely innocent, to see Steve pull out his cock.

“Tell me to stop,” Steve says, heart in his throat, beating blood-hot.

James opens his mouth.

It’s not to speak but to take, his tongue flat and lips curved over teeth. There’s an invitation in his eyes, and Steve doesn’t stop to wonder whether he’s imagining it. He’s desperate, James turns him into a creature of writhing need, and Christ, his mouth’s hot, burning and _wet_ —

Steve slides too deep. James chokes, and when Steve hastens to pull out, he coughs, the sound of it dry and painful. Steve pets his face and hair, mumbling meaningless words of comfort, but the moment James can speak, he says, “Again.”

“James—”

James takes Steve in his hand, this time, and he’s literally led by the cock as James guides him to his mouth, those pretty lips wrapping eagerly around the head. Steve chokes on a cry of his own, but it drowns under the sound James makes. It vibrates along Steve’s dick, and he has to move, tentatively sliding deeper into James, careful not to push too far.

He remembers Bucky’s assertions of sucking cock and men old enough to be his father, Steve one of them in a pocket of reality, and thinks of James not remembering enough of sex to consider himself having done anything. It shows a little, in the way there’s no real technique to his mouth, but he’s warm and wet and it’s _James_ , and the heat in the pit of Steve’s belly roars into an inferno at the sight of him with his pink lips stretched tight and eyes screwed shut. It’s the hottest thing he’s ever fucking seen, and then James starts moving again, and Steve’s brain whites out.

No one’s made to withstand the sight of this man grinding into a thick silicon cock and choking on a flesh-and-blood one, and Steve’s no exception. He doesn’t know where to look—the mouth stretched wide around his dick or the sway of James’s cheeks as he fucks back against the toy. He wants twelve more eyes and hands, wants to touch James everywhere and drink him in.

He settles for fucking James’s mouth and tugging at his hair, using the grip to move him on Steve’s cock.

James relaxes into it with an ease that makes Steve burn. His eyes flutter shut as he gives himself over to it, letting Steve use and abuse his pretty fucking mouth. It’s a sin of a sight, James’s wet mouth and flushed cheeks, his closed eyes and the sinuous rolls of his body. His mouth would have been enough, would have sent Steve spiraling over the edge with just the clumsy suction and eager flicks of tongue, but this view on top of it threatens to unravel him entirely.

He tries to be gentle, heedful of James’s inexperience, but the most he can do is not ram down that tight throat and make James choke. A part of him wants that too, wants James gagging and begging, but Steve’s not so mad with desire that he’s going to spring that on a guy. Bad enough that he’s doing this, barging into James’s room and intruding on his pleasure, and it probably makes him a bad man that he can’t regret it, can’t do anything but slide as deep as he dares into James’s willing mouth and lose his breath to the frantic movement of his body against the toy.

Steve’s at the edge too fucking fast, and it’s his own fault for not so much as touching himself since he fucked James, knowing he’d imagine bright blue eyes and dark curls and not wanting James and Bucky to slip and slide together in his mind, on his tongue. He should have because this is going to be over too fast, when Steve hasn’t had nearly enough of the velvet heat of James’s mouth.

He grips James’s hair tighter, getting a choked-off mean in response. He wasn’t rough with James the first time, but now he’s using his hair like a leash and shoving his face around, and it’s clear James likes it, arching and shuddering when Steve fucks sloppily into his mouth and tugs at a fistful of his hair. Through it all, he doesn’t stop moving, grinding into the toy, harsh and desperate, his skin gleaming golden with sweat.

“I’m close,” Steve grits out, pulling out until it’s just the head of him inside James’s mouth. James laps at it, tongue swirling over the tip and under the foreskin, sending little bolts of pleasure up Steve’s cock. He fucks in deeper, helpless and aching, and James swallows him down with a groan, shuddering wildly. His cheeks are hollowed in soft, sweet suction, and Steve could live here in this warm, pretty mouth.

He lets go of James’s hair to frame his face, both hands on his cheeks, caressing even as he keeps him in place. James reacts with a moan, eyes blinking open to peer dark and dazed at Steve, only for an instant before they slide shut again with a quiet, content noise.

“Jesus, James,” Steve whispers, gritting his teeth against the heat threatening to erupt inside him. “You, your mouth, I—”

That’s the only warning he manages.

It hits him like lightning, electric fire burning up his blood and shuddering down his spine. Steve pushes in as deep as he dares and comes, keeping James in place with his hands.

James tries to swallow; Steve can see the frantic working of his throat and his wide eyes showing too much white, but he sputters and chokes, and when Steve’s softening cock slips out, come bubbles out from between James’s swollen lips, trickling messily down his chin.

The sight’s a blow to his dick, which throbs in want, spent and sensitive as it is. Steve just stares, mesmerized, as James keens and tries to lick up the mess. His body’s still, having frozen the moment Steve started coming, but as he watches, he starts moving again, and there’s no mistaking the newfound urgency in it. James slams back against the mounted toy like he wants it to split him open, and Steve damn near collapses at the wave of heat that tears through him.

He steps back, heart aching at the mournful noise James makes when Steve lets go of his face. He makes a hushing noise, sweeping back a strand of sweaty hair. He extends the gesture down the back of James’s head, trailing knuckles down the length of his spine. Steve feels exposed and filthy, standing fully dressed with his cock out over James’s naked, writhing form, but god, he likes it, likes what he just did, what James let him do.

His hand doesn’t stop until it’s resting over James’s crack, one thumb spread over a tight, bouncing cheek.

“Fuck,” James rasps, half a plea, half a question. “ _Steve_.”

Steve’s mesmerized by the muscles bunching under his palm, the surface smooth and hot, burning up with the need that makes James’s voice crack. He shifts awkwardly across the bed for a better view, and the noise that spills out of James when Steve pulls one cheek to the side to watch the toy move in him is a high, keening thing that grips Steve’s spent dick.

And god, the _view_ —

The fake cock’s thick and black, its glossy surface made uneven with protruding veins. It would be a hell of a sight on its own, but like this, vanishing deep into James’s tight, clenching hole, it’s downright obscene. James never lets all of it slide out of him, body clinging hungrily to the thick length of it, but even without ever seeing the tip, Steve knows it’s a monster of a toy, splitting James into pretty halves.

His fingers clench on James’s ass, nails digging red half-moons into the pale, yielding flesh.

James _howls_ , motions suddenly frantic as if the touch is searing him to the bone. Steve doesn’t let go, doesn’t think he can, fingertips clinging to the heat of James’s skin. And James doesn’t ask him to, doesn’t do anything but whine and beg and drive himself back into the toy, tearing himself open on its monstrous girth over and over and over—

He comes calling Steve’s name, whole body shuddering violently, and Steve kneels there, frozen, the whole of him pulsing fever-hot at the view.

James fucks himself through it, body jerking erratically, making soft, almost pained noises. After, he collapses, limbs giving in under him, and Steve damn near bursts a blood vessel at the sight of James’s spent body sliding off the toy. It’s an endless stretch and slide, his pretty hole clinging to the cock even as James’s whines reach a new pitch. And when it’s finally out, Steve’s left blinking at the sheer size of the thing, feeling strangely inadequate until he remembers James saying the toys don’t compare, and then it’s smug pride that threatens to make him weak at the knees.

James is a panting puddle on the sheets, flat on his stomach and glistening with sweat. Steve’s seized with the urge to lick up his spine, and he does, not pausing to think, glad to be a slave to instinct.

He pulls a shudder and a weak whine out of James, who squirms without trying to move away from Steve’s mouth. Steve straightens, a pleasant heat suffusing his lower half, and swallows past a dry throat at the sight of James, gorgeous and obscene. You could lick him right up, eat this pretty man whole, and god, Steve wants to.

He grabs James’s cheeks and pulls them to the side, exposing his gaping hole. It’s a mess, rim stretched insanely wide, lube trickling down to his balls. He looks well used.

A thumb slides in easy, too easy, so Steve adds another, holding him almost delicately open with both hands.

James’s hole makes a vain attempt to close in around Steve’s thumbs. Steve spreads him wider, flushing hot down his neck with a moment of _awareness_ , but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t want to, drunk on the weak little sounds James is making. They’re quiet, muffled; he’s rubbing his face into the mattress like a cat while his fingers claw at the sheets. It’s a hell of a sight. Steve slides his fingers in deeper, hooks the knuckles over the rim.

James gasps out something that might be words.

Steve hums questioningly, only half interested.

“More,” James says, coherent this time. “I can, I—I can take more.”

It takes a moment for it to sink in, what that means. Steve’s breath stutters in his lungs and then leaves him in one, sharp rush. He looks around on, running on unthinking instinct, and finds the uncapped bottle of lube.

James grunts when Steve pulls his fingers out, but he’s quick to push himself up to all fours, ass bouncing invitingly. Steve slicks himself up, barely breathing, and he doesn’t even remember when he filled up all the way again, effectively distracted by the sight of James wrecking himself on his toy, but it’s there, flushed red and hot to the touch.

He warns James a little, rubbing the head over his open hole, threatening to push in without even beginning to. James just lowers his head and sways back against it, a hushed plea slipping past him, begging more with his body than his words.

Steve fucks in.

James screams, his arms buckle, and he crashes face-first into the bed. Steve follows him with his body, staying buried deep in his tight heat, half mad with how soft and warm and _good_ he feels, all wet and sweet around Steve. It’s not like before, when he opened James with his mouth and his fingers before taking him. He’s all open now, loose and easy, swallowing Steve’s cock in a single, smooth slide. Even with having just come, Steve feels like it would take nothing at all to send him spiraling again.

He sinks his nails into James’s ass, grounding himself in his yielding flesh. James whimpers, fingers clenching and unclenching in the sheets, and when he breathes, the exhales sound like sobs.

“Ssh, honey,” Steve says kindly, without feeling very kind. “You can take it.”

It’s exactly what James told him, minutes ago, but the words on Steve’s tongue seem to hit him like a white-hot lash. James jerks, back arching, fabric tearing under metal fingers.

Steve shoves his cock deeper into him, their bodies grinding together, pressed flush, skin to skin, almost one entity.

He tries to be gentle, mindful of the thick thing that was just in James, but he’s so good and soft, so warm and open, and Steve’s ramming into him between one tender thrust and the next, chasing oblivion in his sweet, shuddering, screaming body.

Steve plasters himself to James’s back, burying his face in his hair and keeping him pinned under his bulk as he screws in deep and hard, tearing a home for himself inside James. He’s all wet heat and helpless clenching, and Steve wants to _ruin_ him.

He feels movement and thrusts a hand down under James’s body, acting on a hunch and catching James’s hand just as it wraps around his cock.

“Off,” Steve growls, and James snatches his hand away with a gasp that ripples through his entire body. Steve gives his dick a good grope, just to find it half-hard and wet from its own release, the mess from when he came untouched on that goddamn toy.

He grows again, rearing back to sink his teeth into the meat of James’s shoulder. James cries out, high and keening, writhing in Steve’s teeth like some sweet animal. Steve lets go of his mouthful. When he licks his lips, he tastes rust.

He drives into James, again and again and again, hard and savage, trying to break him on his dick, and each one pulls more of those weak, wounded cries out of James. It must hurt, he must be sensitive, but god, he takes it all, whining and screaming and writhing, but he takes it.

Steve plants his knees and winds both arms around James and _heaves_ , straightening the two of them in a single, dizzying motion. James shouts, flailing, but Steve holds him fast and fucks into him again, and Christ, it’s tighter, the new angle, and Steve’s not the only one affected, judging by how James throws his head back and howls. He reaches for his dick again, and Steve can see it this time. He slaps the hand away and grabs it before James can retaliate, pinning it to James’s thigh. The metal makes a grinding noise of protest under the grip, nearly drowned out by James cursing.

“No,” Steve says, hardly recognizing himself. “You don’t need a hand, you can fucking come just like this.”

“Steve!”

“ _James_.”

James starts to say something, but all that comes out is a choked cry because Steve sinks his teeth into the juncture of his neck and shoulder and drives his hips up, fucking James and making him bleed, and fuck, he feels cruel, like a fucking animal, and he is, ain’t anything better, not when James is pretty and crying under his teeth, around his cock.

Fingers wind into his hair and pulls his head away from the bleeding flesh, right into a wet, hungry mouth that meets him in a kiss that’s sloppy, desperate, more tongue and breath than anything else.

Steve sinks into James’s mouth, drinking in the taste of him, but he doesn’t stop moving, both hands carving finger-shaped bruises into James’s hips as Steve moves him on his cock. James isn’t wholly passive, but his movements are erratic, jerking. He bounces on Steve’s dick and then goes quiet and limp, whining into their kiss like that’ll get Steve to be sweet on him.

And Steve does want to, half of him always aching to lay James down and love on him, but the animal in him wants to taste blood and ruin.

He does, fucking James till he’s crying, sobbing into Steve’s mouth as their lips become salty and stinging from tears, then fucking him some more until James’s cries climb into fever-pitch, a short-lived warning before he tightens painfully around Steve’s cock, coming with a violent, full-bodied shudder that leaves him limp in the aftermath, easy for Steve to kiss and fuck and use.

Steve finishes with James back on his belly, moving weakly against the mattress while Steve ruthlessly chases his pleasure.

He collapses on James, spent and aching, inside and out. The smell of him is grounding, sex and sweat, and Steve presses his face into the space between his shoulder blades, breathing deep. But he rolls away as James’s breaths become labored, both of them groaning when Steve slips out of James’s ass.

They lie there for a long time, loosely tangled and breathing hard. Come and sweat dry on their skin, but Steve’s at home in the scent and warmth of the body next to his.

Reality takes its sweet time to hit.

“Jesus,” Steve gasps, aware, all of a sudden, of what he _did_. “Jesus Christ. _James_.”

James grunts and, with visible effort, turns around. His eyes are only half open, but they widen when they take in Steve’s expression, glinting with clear amusement. That puts Steve at ease, James’s lack of anger or even discomfort with what happened, but still—Jesus fucking Christ.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he mumbles, feeling the acute urge to facepalm but lacking the energy for it.

“I have a decent idea,” James says, voice weaker, more wrecked, than Steve’s ever heard it even though his eyes are sharper than they were a moment ago, glancing knowingly down at Steve’s groin.

“I—” Steve flounders for a moment without a single clue what to say. He settles on a pitiful, “Sorry.”

“Are you?” James asks, eyebrows raised.

Steve can’t say yes with any degree of honesty.

“No,” he admits, making eye-contact with James’s throat. It looks mauled. _Jesus_.

James laughs. It’s a quiet sound, exhaustion showing. But James wriggles closer to Steve, who wraps him up in his arms gratefully. There’s still some space between them, enough that he can meet James’s eyes without straining. They’re a clear grey-blue, the shade ever changing. Eyes you could drown in, die in.

“Sometimes,” James says, “I am very amused that I fell in love with the one man who’s a bigger mess than I am.”

Steve can’t have heard that right.

But he can’t not have. James is close, his words clear, and Steve’s hearing is excruciatingly acute.

“You love me?”

James’s expression is fondly exasperated.

“I don’t know if I’m very good at hiding it, or if you’re very oblivious.” He shakes his head, eyes closing halfway. “Both, I think.”

“James—”

Steve chokes on the name, words writhing in his throat, wanting to burst through the silent block behind his teeth. James is patient, waiting with a half-smile, wearing the carefully crafted expression of a man who will face heartbreak with perfect equanimity.

But Steve doesn’t want to make him face heartbreak. That makes it much easier to speak.

“I’ve wanted you since I got to know you,” he says. “I don’t know if I remember to live without you.”

James sucks in a harsh breath.

“Like I said,” he says, “the one person more fucked in the head than I am.”

And well, he’s not wrong.

“I don’t mind,” James says almost immediately. “There are worst things I’d learn to live with, Steve, for a man like you.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, how to be worthy of that.

“I’m not a catch,” is what he says in the end. “Said it yourself, James. I’m a mess. You’ve seen it. You know what I did.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you’d sleep with a teenage version of me I don’t even remember being. Stranger things have happened though. We don’t lead normal lives.”

“I don’t know how you’re not angrier.”

“I was, at first. More hurt than angry. Pretty shocked too. I expected competition. Always expected to be a spectator in your inevitable epic love story. But I didn’t see that coming.”

“I’m—”

“Do not,” James snaps suddenly, eyes sharp enough to cut, “apologize, not unless you regret what you did. Don’t lie to me.”

Steve doesn’t regret it. He’ll never regret Bucky, that blue-eyed sunbeam of a boy.

“It’s not him I’d be apologizing for,” he tells James, which makes his eyes soften but also makes him shake his head.

“Of course not,” he mutters, half to himself. “You know why I’m not mad?”

“Tell me,” Steve says softly.

“Well, when you think about it, you—you’ve wanted me, one way or the other, every version of me, every way I am. You looked at the Winter Soldier and saw something more than the mindless weapon they made. You chased what crawled out of him and all the human things I didn’t even remember. And me—you gave me a home. Guess I can’t really be shocked that you saw that kid and wanted him. Even if he’s so far removed from anything I remember that we may as well not be the same person, it’s—I don’t know. It’s not the worst thing, knowing you wanted him. That you were good to him. I know that much. That you’d have been good to him.”

“I tried,” Steve chokes out, helpless against the tears spilling hot down his cheeks. “He—I tried, James, I swear.”

James’s smile is a gentle, shattered thing.

“I know, Steve. I know.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, I—I don’t know _how_.”

James draws him closer, tucking Steve’s face into the crook of his neck, and Steve goes gratefully, hiding his tears and the devastation tugging at his lips. James is comfort, from the warmth of his bare skin to the easy slide of his fingers through Steve’s hair.

The words slip out, a hushed whisper.

“He was scared he wasn’t real.”

James’s body stiffens. His fingers tighten in Steve’s hair.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t.” James doesn’t sound harsh this time, just soft and a little broken. “Don’t apologize. Christ, Steve.”

“I told him he was real. That I’d remember him so he would be, even when he was gone.”

It’s a wonder how steady his voice is when Steve’s entire being feels as if it’s being split wide open and rubbed raw, salt in the wounds and rock around the edges.

In his arms, James shudders.

“I do,” Steve tells him. “I will.”

“I know,” James says, and he sounds like he’s breaking too, open and bleeding. “God, Steve, I know you would. You can’t do anything else, can you?”

There’s nothing Steve can say to that, but the real miracle is that he doesn’t have to, that James knows.

“Don’t leave me,” Steve whispers furiously, a plea and an order. “Not you.”

James digs blunt nails into Steve’s scalp and holds him tight like he’s trying to fuse their bodies into one.

“Not going anywhere,” James says. “I am real, Steve. Always will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm evil. Yes, I'd love to hear what you think.


End file.
